"And what are tools not permitted to do?"
"Feel. Want. Love."
She smiles. It doesn't reach her eyes. Nothing reaches those eyes.
"Excellent progress, H3. You're adapting beautifully." She stands, smooths her suit. "We'll continue tomorrow. Try to rest. You'll need your strength for Protocol Eight."
Protocol Eight.
I don't know what that is, but my body knows. My body remembers something my mind has already erased, and it starts shaking before she even reaches the door.
"One more thing." She pauses, looks back at me. "I know this is difficult. I know it hurts. But what we're doing here is necessary. We're making you into something greater. Something that will change the world."
She leaves.
I curl up on the padded floor and cry. Silent tears that I learned to hide in the first week, because crying out loud means punishment. I cry for the name I can't remember. For the family that must be looking for me, or maybe isn't, maybe they're glad I'm gone. I cry for the boy I was before this room, before the table, before the woman with the ice-blue eyes.
I cry until there's nothing left.
And then I do what they've taught me to do.
I bury it. Shove it down so deep that even I can't find it. Build walls around the pain and the fear and the desperate, screaming need to be someone instead of something.
By morning, I'm empty.
By morning, I'm exactly what they want.
By morning, I'm H3.
I wake up to white.
White ceiling. White walls. White sheets. For one terrible moment, I'm back in the Foundry, strapped to a table, waitingfor the next round of conditioning. My heart hammers against my ribs. My hands clench. Fight or flight kicks in, screaming at me to move, to run, to—
"Hey. Hey, you're okay."
Asher.
His voice cuts through the flashback like a knife through fog. I'm not eight years old. I'm not H3. I'm Jinx Harrison, and I'm in a safe house, and the woman with the ice-blue eyes is somewhere in Singapore, still breathing, still making monsters out of children.
But not for long.
He's beside the bed, dark circles under his eyes, stubble shadowing his jaw. He looks like he hasn't slept in days. His hand finds mine, warm and rough, anchoring me to the present.
"Where..." My voice comes out like sandpaper. "Where am I?"
"Safe house. Different one." He squeezes my hand. "Jagger called in a favor. Black market surgeon. You've been out for two days."
Two days. The flashback lingers at the edges of my vision, the taste of that chemical cocktail still burning the back of my throat. I try to sit up, and pain explodes through my side. Asher's hand presses against my chest, pushing me back down.
"Did he take any of my organs? The fuck, I feel like I got hit by a bus."
"Don't. You'll tear the stitches."
"What—"
"Bullet nicked your liver. Surgeon had to go in and repair the damage." His voice is calm, clinical, but his hand shakes where it rests on my chest. "You lost a lot of blood. There were a few hours where we didn't know if you'd make it."
"But I did."
